Monday, June 2, 2008

A Shake-Up at Cojean

The much-beloved Cojean introduced a new summer smoothie menu today with a fresh spate of American-style promotional tactics.  Outside the Madeleine branch, a Cirque du Soleil reject performed acrobatic stunts with what appeared to be a blue surfboard.  Inside, the staff all wore crisp t-shirts that blazoned “Let’s get physical,” a phrase whose relation to smoothies I don’t completely understand. 

I ordered a “Body Talk” (açai, banana, orange juice) after deciding that it would be it would be slightly less embarrassing to do so than to say to the cashier, “Je vais prendre un ‘O Cherry Cherry.’”  As I sipped, my lunch companions and I realized that the restaurant’s usual inoffensive soundtrack had been replaced by recordings of chirping birds. 

For the sake of its customers’ ability to keep their cool, here’s hoping that Cojean keeps the smoothies but disposes of the PR antics—and soon.

2 comments:

Paul Evans said...

There was a digital radio station called OneWord in the UK, which was supposed to be a new rival to Radio 4 – an intelligent speech channel with provocative and stimulating debate. It went bust last year, and it now broadcasts the sounds of chirping birds 24 hours a day. Its listening figures have risen dramatically since this development.

Not sure it would make me want to buy more pulped fruit drinks, tasty as they may be.

Laura said...

That's one of the most depressing things I've ever heard about the state of public discourse. I think it makes me want to go drown myself in a pulped fruit drink…I wonder, though, did they vary the programming? Whippoorwills at 1:00, pigeons at 1:30, cuckoos at 2:00?